Like Wile E Odysseus

When you put on your mask
your glasses fog up
as your nose exhales
all that super-saturated air
and the world acquires a halo
putting Homer’s
early-born and rosy-fingered dawn
to shame
but you cannot see
pulling off the mask solves that
the areola fades
the world sharpens
it is still beautiful
but with risks
Sirens still call your name at Hooters
Scylla and Charybdis whisper in one ear to sell
that stock you bought last week
and to buy more of it in the other
nothing has changed much
risk is everywhere
mask or no mask
antibody or no antibody
take your pick
be like Wile E Coyote
that manhole at your feet may be
a figment of your imagination
or maybe
your gateway to the netherworld

This Could Be Enormous

I’m not saying we have to be exact
what I’m saying is
try to be accurate within certain limits
I mean
how thorough are they?
they’re going to give this the once over
they’re not fact-checkers
or CPA’s
they are bean counters
and you know how they think
it’s all about the head bean counter
and as we all know
he knows nothing
except what is whispered to him
when the lights go out
this could be the next big thing
if we don’t blow it
there is no such thing as a
national average
even they know that
but they are stuck with their
protocols
the only one we have
is to make it look good on paper
now, here’s a ream of Grade 3
put your mark on it
and do us all a favour
don’t look back

Short Story

Eternity
long as it may seem
is like a short story
Beginning, middle & end
conflict, struggle and resolution
Guy de Maupassant
could have written it

In the Beginning
there was just Him
with all this time on His hands
He wasn’t lonely
but He fretted a lot about
His omnipotence and
what to do with it
a lot of it had to do with
miniscule details
what atoms He favoured
the chemical structure of hydrocarbons
and He kept wondering which one
would work out the best
although He should have known
this went on a long time
in geologic time yes it is
pretty lengthy
but in story-telling time
only a third of the whole
the conflict was His alone
that probably made Him grumpy
as there was no one
to blame
yet

Then He made up his mind
Bang!
Which was nothing but a diversion
designed to rid the universe of
the Evil One
and it didn’t work
He thought it might
but deep down knew better
and the Evil One prospered
due to us
after all
we had the common bond
of both being kicked out of somewhere
so we all struggled
and He fretted some more
having underestimated
our cleverness our intransigence
and our insatiable lusts
and watched as His plans
headed downhill

Finally things will get resolved
we aren’t there yet
but He, having whipped out His
slide rule
sees that about 15% of us
actually followed His rules
and the rest of us
are like Pop-Tarts in this
huge toaster
cursing
part of the resolution
is what they call the
denoument
the outcome of a doubtful series of occurrences
which now leads to sadness
and this is where He finds the culprit
and says:
‘I knew it was carbon all along’

Paul Smith is a civil engineer who has worked in the construction racket for many years. He has travelled all over the place and met lots of people from all walks of life. Some have enriched his life. Others made him wish he or they were all dead. He likes writing poetry and fiction. He also likes Newcastle Brown Ale. If you see him, buy him one. He is a featured poet at Mad Swirl.

exit stage left

he worked there too
I would see him
in the foyer
coming in for evening class
asking me about open mics
chatting scenes & actors
mouth wide
goatee curling
like a thick black
hedgehog
under attack
always a laugh
a long toothy laugh
& then his tall man’s hand
extending & shaking

& then I stopped seeing him
& then I didn’t work there
anymore
anyway
& then
I heard the news

a balcony somewhere hot

he picked up the rock

expecting to find
perfection

but instead found
dead bugs
& happiness

he didn’t notice either

because that’s not what
he was looking for

Fruit Bowl

she rearranged
my furniture
while I was out
& later
tied me
to a chair
& used a blindfold

she bought me
a fruit bowl
blue fairy
lights
and
a Paddington Bear coat

I regretted ever
letting her
have a key

wealthy daughters
come along like rain

too much
& not enough

after I’d finally found
an umbrella
her father
remarked
that I hadn’t been
up to standard
in the first place

twenty years later
I still have the fruit bowl
& I’m still laughing

Mum Shagged the Milkman

but it’s not
as bad as
it sounds

she married him
& he was a barman
when they first met

then later
at some point
my brothers
& I
attended
their wedding
in pin stripe shirts

I still remember
the day
I found out
I was the dictionary
definition of a bastard

I still remember
feeling a little surprised
disappointed even
that the words
had no effect on me

but maybe that was when
I first learned
words can
just be
words

& nothing
at all

A Golden Ale Sky

the horizon
is pouring
itself
almost
imperceptibly
slowly
westward
shifting
its
every
thing
fraction by
fraction

either that
or I’m more fucked

than I realise

the remedy

for most
things

sleep

& the warmth
of someone
you’d
die
for

Danny D. Ford’s poetry & artwork has appeared in numerous online and print titles. He has sixteen chapbooks to his name, including the recent collections Rum Lime Rum (Laughing Ronin Press 2023) and Sucking on a Wet Pint (Anxiety Press 2022). He can be found in Bergamo, Italy.

I am not barren

I am not barren.
My fecundity has not dwindled yet.
Enough as before to bring forth blossoms of all sorts and I do.
Alas! Frequent invasions of atrocious autumn
Debilitates their potency to bloom in full
To show my greatness in their daintiness and redolence
That would once captivate aves from overseas
To warble in praise of my nature.
O God! Free me from this brutish autumn,
Can’t endure it any more.
To glitter with my flair
Let clement spring reign over me.

Don’t avert thy gaze

Don’t avert thy gaze, behold these cemeteries!
The voices for peace and averse to slavery
Are interred here.
The eyes anti to tyranny and the altruistic hearts
For the persecuted are interred here.
Don’t avert thy gaze, behold these cemeteries!
The buttresses for the decrepit and the comforts for the pained,
The joys for the dejected and the glims for darkness are interred here.
Don’t avert thy gaze, behold these cemeteries!
The gallant patriots of my nation- moral for the coward Slaves
The upshots of the tyrannous reign and even of the traitors are interred here.

How to fulfil dreams there?

How to fulfil dreams there
Where one often takes breath in the net of fear of disappearance and of death
And where one carries more coffins but palanquins few.
Not many raiments for weddings
But more shrouds one has to sew.
How to fulfil dreams there
Where each moment is spent in jails and yowls
And youths decay in dingy jails.
Where one while fishing, fishes out a corpse
Of a mother’s only progeny and succour
Beheaded or mutilated or putrefied
Or still from his wounds, is dripping blood of innocence.
How to fulfil dreams there
Where one’s childhood is caged, divested of its joys
Where deranged mothers (as if their sons) are lullabying toys.

Shafkat Aziz Hajam is a poet from Kashmir, India. He is the author of two children’s poetry books, The cuckoo’s voice, and The canary’s voice. His poems have appeared in international magazines and anthologies like Wheel song anthology (UK based), Prodigy, digital literary magazine USA, PLOTS CREATIVES online literary magazine USA, Inner Child Press International USA, AZAHAR anthology in Spain, SAARC anthology, Litlight literary magazine Pakistan etc. He has also written more than a hundred funny limericks for the children and adults’ poetry book, The Unknown Wounded Heart.

The silence of the night,
in the wake of many bullet-rent years,
is torn by the remonstrance of three stray dogs
who find no food in the garbage container,
having been emptied by junk-collectors
who would not now hesitate to consume
any available leftovers.

In the background, the festivity of a posh nightclub,
which is not very far-off,
aims at the slumberous heart
with enervating beats of folklorish drums.
This happens every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night
until the break of dawn.

Poverty and excessive wealth sit side by side
in this part of the world.
There are no West Ends or East Ends,
which only makes the contrast more flagrant.

My dog is agitated and responds with a series of barks.
I have to find a way of calming her down
or I will meet with a wave of disapprobation
from the neighbours themselves,
who will sift all other noises
and only hear my dog’s responding soundtrack.
I start stroking her coat
and her barks eventually subside,
but she remains unsettled
by both the shrieks of the nightclub
and the intermittent howls of homeless dogs.
How can I explain to friends that insomnia
has nothing to do with the intake of caffeine
or psychological strife?

Contemplation III

What is God?
I ask myself as I contemplate the interwoven clouds.
Far on the horizon, faint streaks of lightning corrugate the gloaming sky,
Ruffling my meditative stance,
for now we dread whatever can herald a storm,
which we associate with floods, earthquakes, and apocalyptic doom.

I retrieve my thoughts from the menace of apprehensiveness
that tends to dominate our current moods.
How can I paint a mental picture of a featureless Lord?
He is not supposed to possess eyes, a mouth, or a nose.
In paintings, He is depicted with a white beard
and sagaciously old.
What if He is eternal youth
and this virgin world which we have contaminated
is one of his countless words?

I like the idea of inhabiting a word.
It is simpler than the metaphysical and transcendental schools
for within each word He utters
dwells realms and worlds to roam.

Calculations

She twists every word I speak.
I decide to calculate how many words I utter
in her presence every day,
and to monitor their denotative and connotative implications.
She does not say Good Morning,
because she knows that every conversation would end
in acrimony and ill feelings.
She resurrects the past instantaneously
and blames me for every single decision
taken by my dad,
whose headstone is now twenty-two years old.
These calculations would hopefully divert my mind
from the putridity of every memory she unearths
to derail any dialogue aimed at peace-making.
I can put up with the abuse that pours into my consciousness
but the desecration of the memory of the dead,
especially that of my kind-hearted dad,
is more than I can take.
She seizes every opportunity to heap blame
on his decaying head.

On the first day, it does not work.
I wade into her lukewarm morning talk
until it gets scorchingly hot
and lava is forced out of my tongue.
It becomes so hard to keep silent
once the agitation of the nervous system sets in
and she is so good at awakening the worst in you
not even slumberous demons on narcotics
can ignore her venom.

On the second day, I succeed in shortening each argument
by five minutes
and though I cannot count the words in use,
the shortened time of the interchange
indicates the inevitable decrease.

On the third day, I begin to enjoy this test of patience;
however, the less words I use,
the more infuriated she becomes.
It is a no-win situation.
I begin to turn my thoughts inwardly
every time she starts her turbulent orchestration.
Half her words go unheard
and the lack of physiognomical reactions on my part
makes her mistake taciturnity for acquiescence
in her never-ending remonstrations.

Dr Susie Gharib is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde with a Ph.D. on the work of D.H. Lawrence. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Green Hills Literary Lantern, A New Ulster, Crossways, The Curlew, The Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Ink Pantry, Mad Swirl, Miller’s Pond Poetry Magazine, and Down in the Dirt.

Susie’s first book (adapted for film), Classic Adaptations, includes Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, and D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

You can find more of Susie’s work here on Ink Pantry.

Just visiting

Slipping softly through sun-dappled trees
swaying grasses in time to summer’s hum
casting pollen up like sequinned sparkles
strolling though blossoming fields
ruffling the feather of the nesting birds.
Whipping waves into mountains of spray
stripping the last leaves from autumn’s dying.
Hats are tossed into the air
the rain flies in the face of night.
Forever moving, a restless rover
knowing no settled home.
Tonight there may be howling
and the windows may shake
but by morning there will be little sign
except the detritus of the wild.
Packed up gypsy-like,
the wind trails his life through the world
and is shut out
even in the quiet times.

Strike

I saw a spark of lightning in the dark,
its burst of brilliance lit up the whole sky.
The mark of blackness after was so stark
with depth impenetrable to the eye.

The grit and fury split the world in two,
with haunted trees denuded of their leaves.
The houses silhouetted by the view
of such a force that threatens all that breathes.

As quickly as it came it struck no more,
the night remained untainted by its thrust,
and all that stalked the darkness as before
returned to living as they always must.

Glenis has been writing poetry since the first Covid lockdown and does her writing at night as she suffers from insomnia. When she is not writing poetry she makes beaded jewellery, reads, and sometimes runs 10K races slowly. She has been published by Dreich, Dust Poetry, and Wildfire Words.

Shake Infinite Do

Bill to Gross A cinched Flame
     threw – – – – – form – – – – –
MOAN   a   Lease   A   attacked
              forbearance wheelbarrow
(un)avoid(able)
                      conflict
Negation                     therapy
– – – – – pursuit phobia
            stoic branch – – – – –
     happy harpy made a Pen
Is     never     underworked
  hairy     chest     heave X-
Ray            tape            measure
      treasure

Tart Mayhem Brick

new        release        PeR        gloved
     hand             FuLL                      steam
shipping label cut upward
featured Wrist home in
pigeon foRt short hOpe In
hAlf maverick round UP
supper formulation ProTecTed
        d   e   g   r   e   e

Rate Reek Bikini

defamation triangulation doubt bricks
speechless brother of a tonic spandex
Tangent practice metal accessibility leak
        memorial speech
        fired expatriate
        acid steam
                         intimate bAr
                         WaX        ed

asleep in the brambles

crisp snowflakes
                        on the frontlines of global teddy bear wars

        rainstorms with oats
        unforgettable suspenders

               stretched like a mislaid zig zag
               of loch ness monster promenades

this prolonged wonderment spinning like a helicopter

awash in graceful varieties of limping

cashews shovelling gelatin racing down bankruptcy
     fingernails could grow six, seven, eight inches
              motorcycle attaché trifle snickering

the bunch of clumsy grapes
punch a stage hymn

                        a dinosaur skeleton
                        in cheap fabrication
                        backsliding

Joshua Martin is a Philadelphia based writer and filmmaker, who currently works in a library. He is member of C22, an experimental writing collective. He is the author most recently of the books peeping sardine fumes (RANGER Press) and [Ruptured] >> Schematic <<  MAZES (Sweat Drenched Press). He has had numerous pieces published in various journals.

You can find more of Joshua’s work here on Ink Pantry.

O congenial queen of Autumn!
Why so sweet of all flowers?
Tall in height, colour so bright!
Venerations of all walks in life.
Paradise on earth and for human beings.
Primal ballerina for mellowest breeze,
Crony of the ablaze sun
And a guest of rainy season.
One after another hour
Full of motivations and fun
For the worldly lasses and sons!
O convivial queen of Autumn!
Your farewell is so near
Nearer than the poet’s pen
On the paper filled with emotions!

Monalisa Parida is an assistant professor of English in Bhubaneswar College of Engineering, Jankia, Odisha, and a prolific poetess. She is very active on social media platforms and her poems have been translated into different  languages and published in various e-journals.

She has 100 international awards for writing poetry. Her poems have been published in international e-journals “New York parrot”, “The Writers Club” (USA), “Suriyadoya literary  foundation”, “kabita Minar”, “Indian Periodical” (India) and “Offline Thinker “, “The Gorkha Times “ ( Nepal), “The Light House”(Portugal), “Bharatvision”(Romania), “International cultural forum for humanity and creativity”(Aleppo, Syria), “Atunispoetry.com”(Singapore), also published in various newspapers like “The Punjabi Writer Weekly (USA)”,  “News Kashmir (J&K, India)”, Republic of Sungurlu (Turkey)” etc.

One of her poems has been published in an American anthology named “The Literary Parrot Series-1 and series-2 respectively (New York, USA)”. Her poems have been translated into various languages like Hindi, Bengali, Turkish, Persian, Romanian etc.  She is the author of the books “Search For Serenity”, “My Favourite Grammar”, “Paradigm”, and “Beyond Gorgeous”.

It was the 90s and I was in my 20s walking down Broadway on my way home when a man grabbed my boob and grinned as he passed by.

I was an unlikely candidate for groping with my A cup chest.

A woman watched the whole thing go down and asked, “Do you know him?”

I said, “No!”

Karol Nielsen is the author of the memoirs Walking A&P and Black Elephants and three poetry chapbooks. Her first memoir was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her full-length poetry collection was a finalist for the Colorado Prize for Poetry. Her poem “This New Manhattan” was a finalist for the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize.

The early

sonnets of Michelangelo,
those composed whilst
on a limited folic acid
intake, are so twisted
in upon themselves
they have become
both water-resistant
& washable. Even so,
that insane artistry,
the multiple narrative
perspectives, the forward-
thinking use of glass—
all still tempt like fresh
raspberries at the local store.

flirty singles, power players, & celebrities

It’s evident from
the way that
the angles of the
owner’s jawbones

project that this
laundromat is a
reincarnation of
the original late

night dance-spot
where mansion chic
& rock-star bach-
elor pad collided.

adagio

Words come back to me —
pizzicato, arco, bass clef — from
that part of my past which
has to do with music. Finger
positions come back, the
horsehair bow, & that upright

stance you have to adopt &
adapt to with an instrument
as big as yourself. Associat-
ions come back, & favourite
pieces — currently it’s the
Concierto de Aranjuez that’s

picking its way across my
forebrain. You might say
everything comes back; but
as long as time continues its
inexorable march forward you
know that will never be true.

Mark Young was born in Aotearoa / New Zealand but now lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia. His most recent books are with the slow-paced turtle replaced by a fast fish, published by Sandy Press in May, 2023, & a free downloadable chapbook of visuals & poems, Mercator Projected, published by Half Day Moon Press in August 2023.

You can find more of Mark’s work here on Ink Pantry.

‘Chris’, hippie appearance, sorrowful eyes

Another life story at the AA
meeting. He began with the gullible
stepfather, the mother’s fantasies, then

we heard about his unseen real father’s
dominance, his adolescent interest
in the spiritual life, his scorn for hire

purchase, his qualities of leadership.
He loved to play tricks, hated violence,
and although women adored him, men, too,

from all walks of life, he seemed celibate.
He saw it coming, predicted it, when
his own people betrayed him, crucified

him really. He would cry out for a drink,
felt desperate when he thought he had been
abandoned. One of his best mates denied

knowing him, and after he woke in a
cave, alone, bleeding, left for dead, that was
when he knew his life had hit rock bottom.

Commentators’ Team

Defence: I know that’s a cliché/ It’s a known fact/ It’s an arm wrestle/ Scoreboard pressure/ They’re under the pump/ Time’s ticking away.

Midfield: He needs to stand up and be counted/ A living legend/ On a learning curve/ A season-defining game/ Statistically speaking/ Where angels fear to tread.

Attack: Absolutely sensational/ He’s on fire/ Last roll of the dice/ No pain, no gain/ Through the eye of a needle/ Winners are grinners.

Interchange: Horribly wrong/ It’s a tragedy/ At the end of the day/ The bottom line.

Ian C Smith’s work has been published in  BBC Radio 4 Sounds,The Dalhousie Review, Gargoyle, Griffith Review, Honest Ulsterman, Southword, Stand, & The Stony Thursday Book.  His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide).  He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island.

You can find more of Ian’s work here on Ink Pantry.